The Beast Inside
Have you ever thought about where killers come from? Let me start from the beginning. Let’s say… you were a gamer. Yeah, that’s about appropriate. Make it a Minecraft gamer. An ordinary person. How does a happy-go-lucky Minecraft player turn into a megalomaniac raving nightmare with nothing but the goal to dominate? It’s quite simple actually. One little mistake. A butterfly effect. Let me start again. Once upon a time, there was a player. His username was Succession. He was one of the oldest players in the game. He was a god at PvP, and knew all of the tips and tricks needed to survive in the game. Later down the lane, Succession started up a server with his friend MistA called Polar. This server is now gone, the site taken down. But when it was online, it skyrocketed in popularity. Succession proved to be a dependable and reliable admin, and MistA was a great coder. They were an unstoppable team together, and it looked like the beginning of a new golden age for the server. Then IT happened. It was meant to be just a harmless prank. One of the frequent players on the server was known as a troll to many - annoying and frustrating to deal with but also not going to far as to break the rules. He proved to be a fairly big nuisance to the admins and fellow players on the server, and one day Succession had enough. He devised a little ‘prank’ to play on the guy, just maybe to scare him into behaving properly. The player owned a little house they were very proud of, and being an admin, Succession wanted to devise a chicken prank using spawners and afk on top of his house. Fill his house with them, leave the area, annoy him, get a good laugh out of it. Simple and harmless, right? Except when he was making it... it somehow turned into a creeper spawner. This was where everything went wrong. The spawner hadn't created anything yet, and he could've just broken the thing and replaced it with the right one. In that moment, every future timeline narrowed down to this one moment - the ones where the server - and himself - became one of the most well known in the community, the ones where the server was gone the next day, the ones where he fell down a dark and inescapable path. The threads of time were suspended midair, tentative, waiting. They were fragile, as delicate as a butterfly wing. The slightest touch could break them. And he left it. In his mind, he decided to just leave the spawner. Natural curiosity at what would happen prevented him from fixing this fatal mistake. In that moment, all of the good futures fell away. A swift slice - gone. They fell down, ripped in half, broken, limp and lifeless. And he began his path down the dark. When that player came back, they were horrified to discover that their house was full of hissing creepers. They immediately asked for help, and MistA came in, clearing the house of mobs with a command. But when the player went upstairs, they saw the spawner... a split second before one of the newly spawned creepers blew up in their face, collapsing the house and destroying their spawnpoint, leaving them stranded on some island far, far away. The player went on a rage, and Succession was forced to ban him as he was going over the top. In his mind, he felt incredibly guilty, but at the same time, he felt some sort of... pride, at what he'd done. He told himself the troll deserved it, and eventually managed to forget about his guilt. The server was peaceful again... or so it seemed. Then the second event happened. There was a massive raid. Polar was an open survival world server with set rules, but when the raiders arrived, they shows no mercy whatsoever, tearing apart the landscape, destroying buildings painstakingly made over months and months of hard work. And once one of them got their hands on the creeper spawner Succession never got rid of, it all went downhill. Succession kept banning them, but they constantly logged in from alts and continuing their raid. This was a carefully planned attack, and the few moderators were being overwhelmed. It was the sight of everything - the creations of his fellow players destroyed, the one beautiful landscape torn up and destroyed, that he snapped for the first time. Grabbing one of the players, he teleported them into an inescapable barrier box and used the /smite command he'd asked MistA to add. Lightning rained as the player was killed over and over again, pouring all of his rage into this one moment. Finally he banned him, and the player was gone. Suddenly in a fit, he teleported himself to a group of raiders who were preparing to set fire to a giant wooden statue. Without even a slightest thought for the creation, he locked their spawnpoint to their current location and spammed the /smite command in the chat, jump scaring the raiders. Even as the server started to lag dangerously, he carried on spamming with some sort of twisted joy, watching as they died, over and over again. Finally, the server couldn't handle it anymore, abruptly crashing, and the Polar forums were flooded with accusations against him. With the raiders gone, he was mortified at what he'd done and was deeply sorry for his actions. Unfortunately, the buildings destroyed weren't able to be retrieved, and a large amount of players quit overnight. The server was still popular, although not nearly as much as before. MistA programmed a new item which allowed a player to protect a certain block of land to prevent further griefing, and backups of the server were made periodically. As for Succession, a petition was actually put into place to demote him, although MistA was reluctant to do so. Eventually, he was demoted to Moderator, and a new player Acelots was made the new Admin. Succession was full of bitter feelings towards them, but kept quiet, determined to keep doing his job as to not be demoted further. He managed to maintain somewhat friendly terms with the person that took his place, and the server started to climb the ladder again. The third event didn't happen until nearly a year later, but it was the biggest one yet and a huge blow. Until then he and Acelot has never actually quarreled, Succession careful to restrain his anger, but it suddenly all fell to pieces when the admin wanted to implement a feature he didn't like. The following is all that remains of the scrambled chat logs, as Succession tore up the Polar server backups shortly after his fall. ---- <MODSuccession> 'I don't like this. '<ADMINAcelots> I've already discussed with Misty, they said they like it, so we're going forwards with the idea. <MODSuccession> Oh, are they listening to you now? <MODSuccession> Kissing your feet after they threw me off my position... <ADMINAcelots> No... that's not... are you alright? <MODSuccession> 'Alright? '<MODSuccession> DO YOU THINK I'M ALRIGHT? <ADMINAcelots> Succession, calm down. <MODSuccession> Who asked you to steal MY server? <MODSuccession> I thought of it, I worked on it, I painstakingly invited people to join us, I worked for it. <ADMINAcelots> Stop. <MODSuccession> 'And now? '<MODSuccession> I HAVE SOME RANDOM DUMBASS IDIOT COME IN AND TAKE FROM UNDER MY NOSE. <MODSuccession> ALL BECAUSE OF A STUPID MISTAKE. <ADMINAcelots> 'Succession, be rational. It was NOT a mistake, you were the one who spammed the command and crashed the server. '<MODSuccession> Oh, so it's all my fault, huh? <MODSuccession> That I'm here now, stripped of my title and my rightful ownership? <ADMINAcelots> Succession, last warning. <MODSuccession> I hope you die. I hope you burn in the eternal flames of damnation. I hope you feel my pain you little sh*t. ---- Acelots had to ban Succession temporarily for breaking a rule - conducting a personal attack against another player. When he was finally unbanned, he was no longer a mod - just a normal player. At this point in time he still had enough sense to hold together - he knew that his attack was uncounted for. Still, he was extremely bitter towards Acelots and was not afraid to openly show it. The server's rankings started to falter as his verbal attacks - obvious, but not breaking the rules - increased in intensity, pushing the server limits. Finally, when his once best friend MistA, or Misty confronted him about his behaviour, he snapped for the last time. He attacked them for everything they'd done - real or not - and he was so fierce he almost drove her to suicide with his hate. Every ounce of remorse was long gone - as soon as he finished he quit the server and blocked her on every social media he had her friended, shutting her off forever. The server went into an uncomfortable silence for almost a week. MistA had to take a break to recover from Succession's verbal attack, and Acelots filled in her gap. Eight days after Succession was last seen, the server was raided again. This time though, there were even more raiders than before. All of them had hack clients that made then even more dangerous, and their leader was Succession. Lost to the darkness, he tore up the world he once protected and loved, leaving everything to waste. The only reason why Acelots didn't ban him right off the start was because he was shocked and horrified at his deteriorated mental state. The admin confronted him, and Succession spat a series of curses at his face, calling him above all an incompetent human who didn't deserve to live. When Acelots typed in the ban command, the server suddenly crashed, kicking anyone who was left out. It was down for a full ten minutes, and when Acelots could get in again... he was no longer admin. Rather, Succession was now the owner of the server once more, standing in the midst of the burning landscape. He showed no mercy. He destroyed everything with fire, tnt, lightning, everything. Nothing was safe. Within an hour the landscape within a thousand blocks of spawn was torn up and unrecognisable, watching with glee as everything fell in on itself. Finally, with a chilling giggle, accepting his insanity, he deleted the server forever. That wasn't the last time he was heard from. The Polar forums still remained up for a while. Acelots, MistA and the mods still retained their ranks there and were flooded with questions, trying to answer them in vain. Eventually though, Succession hacked into the site too, destroying it, leaving nothing was a single thread titled 'I've Gone Too Far.' The website was later taken down entirely, and the url no longer exists. Succession deleted his Minecraft account and put all of his other accounts on lockdown, and hasn't been heard from since. If he's still online somewhere, it's under a different name. This is the last thing that remains from him before he disappeared forever, the thread he left on the forums. ---- I've gone too far. I've destroyed a server I love. A server I worked for over the past two years. I was the one who hacked into it, tearing apart everything. All the creations and builds, all the progress - gone. This is the end. This is most likely the last time you'll ever hear from me. Any of you. Don't attempt to find me. Am I sorry? Yes. I am deeply sorry. For not doing this earlier when I had the chance. I've gone too far, yes. And it's still not the farthest I can go =) - Succession And that ends the story of Succession. Once a great player, fallen prey to his own conscience. He cut his threads of fate. Lost forever, due to one small action he wasn't able to fix. The moral of the story? Watch your actions. Watch what you say. Be in control of what you think. Or one day, they might turn around, and start controlling you.